While some of us are still waiting for our favourite Symbian smartphone manufacturer to widely embrace capacitive touch screens, have you spared a thought for the next leap in touch screen technology? Well, your next generation touch screen could be utilising Quantum Tunnelling Composites (QTC).
Read on in the full article.
Hey, if this is really pressure sensitive, that does that mean we'll be able to go back to using waterproof covers, gloves, pens, paper-clips, cold fingers, dry fingers and nice, narrow, stylii?
Any different from Stantum's screens?
Stantum already have something that can do exactly what is described (detect pressure). I know because I tried it at SEE2009. In fact, I wrote my own little blog post a while back about it: http://brendandonegan.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/capacitive-vs-resistive/
Sounds like the only discernible difference is the thickness of it. So why not just make the article primarily about very thin touchscreens and the possibilities *they* bring rather than focusing on a feature which is, while quite exciting, already available.
Btw, it's worth pointing out that Symbian^3 and forward supports a concept called 'advanced pointers'. Nothing fancy, just a mechanism for conveying pressure (and interestingly 'height'😉 data to the UI. Something to ponder over...
This is a quite different technology - Stantum uses standard "air-gap" resistive technology and appears to rely heavily on the controller to determine pressure. QTC is a solid material whose resistance varies as the material is squashed - so provides a direct measurement of pressure. The fact that is a solid material is why it can be used to create thinner "touch" layers, but it also means that mechanical wear is not an issue thereby offering a more durable solution. This also simplifies production as there is only one "layer" to create.